On the North Coast Line.(Poem)

 
ON THE NORTH COAST LINE 
 
   The train coming on up the Coast 
   fitting like a snake into water 
   is fleeing the sacrificial crust 
   of suburbs built into fire forest. 
   Today, smoke towers above there. 
 
   We've winged along sills of the sea 
   we've traversed the Welsh and Geordie 
   placenames where pickaxe coughing 
   won coal from miners' crystal lungs. 
   No one aboard looks wealthy: 
 
   wives, non-drivers, Aborigines, 
   sun-crackled workers. The style 
   of country trains isn't lifestyle. 
   River levees round old chain gang towns 
   fall away behind our nm of windows. 
 
   By cuttings like hangars filled with rock 
   to Stroud Road, and Stratford on the Avon, 
   both named by Robert Dawson, who ordered 
   convicts hung for drowning Native children 
   but the Governor stopped him. God 
 
   help especially the underdogs of underdogs 
   and the country now is spread hide 
   harnessed with sparse human things 
   and miles ahead, dawning into mind 
   under its approaching cobalt inked  ...